Over recent weeks, the Spanish state and the capitalist class it represents have again shown their true repressive nature.

Thy have jailed Mallorcan rapper Josep Miquel Arenas Beltrán, known as ‘Valtònyc’, for over three years over his songs. The courts found his music glorified terrorism, committed slander, defamed the crown (“lèse-majesté”) and included threatening lyrics.

During the same period, the conceptual artist Santiago Sierra had his artwork ‘Contemporary Spanish Political Prisoners’ withdrawn from the Arco fair in Madrid before anyone had a chance to see it. As stated by organisers, “the fair understands that the controversy that the exhibition of these pieces has caused in the media is damaging the visibility of the rest of the art displayed.”

These are just the latest attacks on artistic freedom of expression in the Spanish state, added to repressive laws over recent years, the violence of October 1, the imposition of ‘article 155’ in Catalonia and accompanying Jailings. These attacks should be a clear reminder to all that fear and violence are the capitalists’ ultimate answer to the crisis of their system.

The artistic community must answer these attacks. It must not become the accepted norm that intimidation and censorship silence artists and political action.

These attacks must be a call to artists, workers and young people to renew the struggle to bring down the right-wing Partido Popular government in Madrid, and the repressive social system it represents.

They are scared of artists and the voice of opposition that we can create – especially if we link that to the wider social movements and struggles that exploded in 2017 in particular. Why else would they send out these signals of repression?

We must answer these attacks with an avalanche of anti-establishment art – and most importantly, by organising protest actions that expose the corruption of the system and help to build a movement to end it.

We must fight not only against attacks on freedom of expression, but on all issues that affect us – like affordable spaces, proper payment and rights for our work, and the precarious existence that we live with.

Not all art, of course, lends itself to political messages. In Bad Art we are often not ‘political artists’ as such, but we are artists that are politicised.

We mobilise and organise as artists and workers, using our skills to fight for our rights, and alongside the working class and youth against all exploitation and oppression. We believe it necessary to end the capitalist system that often crushes the artistic spirit, and replace it with a socialist society.

Bad Art is an international project bringing together socialist artists. This year we are commemorating the 80th anniversary of André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky’s ‘Manifesto: towards a free revolutionary art’. For this we will be organising events and actions around Bad Art’s main themes of struggle: access, freedom and organisation.

We encourage you to contact us, and get involved. Join with us yourself, or link your collectives with us. Artists must not stand alone. Solidarity and mobilisation can push back repression.

Info@badartworld.net

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/03/01/no-to-spanish-state-repression-of-artists-for-artistic-freedom-from-censorship-and-capitalism/feed/0#BadArtWorldTour a big success at a time of growing fermenthttp://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/01/15/badartworldtour-big-success/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2018/01/15/badartworldtour-big-success/#commentsMon, 15 Jan 2018 06:21:37 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=1953Global political ferment, a consequence of the financial crisis of 2007-08, is increasingly reflected in the arts. And it provides the backdrop for the Bad Art project’s celebration of the centenary of the Russian revolution, linked to the struggles of today. Bad Art editor JAMES IVENS reports.

Uprisings against the status quo like Brexit – and, in a distorted way, the election of Donald Trump – have caused much soul-searching in the arts establishment. Literary circles agonise over “the role of the writer” in articles and meetings, and ask if writing alone is an act of resistance. Of course, writing can be political – although you can’t write Trump out of office. However, this questioning is part of growing agitation in the arts, and more organised discussion of politics in these middle and upper layers. Jacobin, a prominent left-wing journal in the US, considers culture a key area; it has a national reading group organiser. Even the London Review of Books is encouraging subscribers to form reading groups.

“Postmodernism is dead,” said the Times Literary Supplement in June. “What comes next?” Marxists will not be surprised by this observation. As a school of thought and art, postmodernism is the embodiment of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” rudderlessness, which is not to say that any given movement in art has no value. But the social contradictions capitalism declared resolved 28 years ago are back, and back big. In that TLS article, the academic Alison Gibbons explains that the era of postmodernism “rejected grand narratives, including those of religion, the concept of progress, and of history itself.” Authors today are joining the search for answers following the global financial shock from August 2007 and its snowballing consequences: “This new literature can, in good faith, examine complex and ever-shifting crises – of racial inequality, capitalism and climate change – to which it is easy to close one’s eyes.”

Easy for some. For most, the savagery of capitalist society is too present to ignore. The 2017 wave of revelations about sexual abuse by the powerful began in the entertainment industry. Many victims of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Louis CK were silent at first, not least because these men had the power to launch or crash their careers. And November marked three years since the floodgates opened on rape allegations against Bill Cosby.

In Britain, the women’s committee of entertainment union Equity has campaigned for some time against misogynistic audition practices. Directors, and people claiming to be directors, demand in breakdowns (actor job listings) that women commit to full nudity before even seeing the script. They use degrading language in breakdowns, hold castings in their private residences, and ask invasive personal questions, often not pertinent to the role. Following the latest scandals, the union has launched its own investigation into sexual harassment in the industry.

In October 2016, police broke up a street theatre performance in Santos, Brazil, arresting one of the actors. The subject of the show was police violence. Performing it was the Trupe Olho da Rua (Eye of the Street Troupe), continuing Brazil’s tradition of using participative theatre in mass assemblies and street meetings as part of working-class political discussion. Brazil has had a mini-boom in grassroots resistance in the arts: the ‘saraus das periferias’, cultural events thrown by residents of the impoverished city suburbs. They are not just a relief from the tedium of poverty, or a platform for the voices of the poor and oppressed, although both are important functions. They have also become a site of direct struggle against austerity, with victorious campaigning by periferia inhabitants against cuts to sarau funding.

Defending the right to take part in the arts as artist, audience or both is a basic class demand in any country. In Scotland, West Lothian council, with a minority Labour administration backed by the Tories, is planning £73 million of cuts in its next budget. High on the list is the instrumental music service which provides free lessons for all the county’s school students. South of the border, Arts Council England has lost around £267 million from its annual budget since 2010 and calculates that local government has cut arts investment by a further £236 million. That’s half a billion pounds a year.

As with all austerity, it hits hardest those already struggling most: working-class artists, young artists, women, black and Asian people and so on. In the eight years from 2007, London not only lost titans of live music like the Astoria and 12 Bar Club, but 35% of its grassroots music venues, which give stage time to new acts, according to a Greater London Authority report. The numbers in all areas of the arts go on and on this way.

Of course, austerity is far from capitalism’s only distorting influence. Artworks, and auctionable fine art in particular, are status symbols for the jet-setting plutocrat as much as safe stores of value in a turbulent economy. Art is also a propaganda medium for the capitalist system. Sometimes indirect, prettifying or distracting from the way things are, or vilifying oppressed groups in passing. Sometimes direct, as with the portrayal of Leon Trotsky as a bloodthirsty, sexist gangster in the new eight-part drama ‘Trotsky’ on Russia’s Channel One. And all the sewage of bigotry and violence that comes with class society impacts the arts as well, as Weinstein and co have reminded us.

However, the struggle to free the arts to be themselves, to tackle social problems if they wish instead of reinforcing them, or just to exist for their own sake regardless of profit value, cannot be separated from the struggle for working-class access to the arts. In fact today, more than at any time in history, the figure of the artist is found in the ranks of the working class. There has been folk art in every form of society but earlier class society had a tendency to restrict ‘fine art’ to specialists maintained by patronage, buttressing the prestige of the aristocracy and church. Industrial techniques of mass production and reproduction brought art into the home of every worker, and the tools to make it within reach as well.

Young people in particular often seek artistic routes to articulate their anger at the system. Is there any better expression of young, black, working-class passion than grime? It’s no accident that Stormzy and others created the #Grime4Corbyn banner. But capitalism also frustrates the artistic aspirations it promises to satisfy, through the market’s distortion of content and financial limits on who can participate, both compounded by austerity. The internet has deepened this contradiction, creating a ubiquitous means of mass communication and a wild-west market dominated by tech monopolies and big advertisers.

We cannot tell all the untold stories if workers, the poor and oppressed do not have the free time, training, funding and facilities to participate. And these interlinked social and economic struggles cannot be separated from the general struggle for a socialist world. A world where, as Karl Marx imagined, “society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind.”

So in 2015, members of the Committee for a Workers’ International launched the Bad Art project. Bad Art aims to find a road to those young people who see the arts as their only outlet; to those working in the arts, abused and restrained by the social and economic ills of capitalism; to all workers unable to take part in the arts as makers or spectators as much as they desire. We want artists, in the broadest sense, to bring their energy and talent to the workers’ movement. CWI members also hope to win the best of them to revolutionary Marxist ideas.

Bad Art has produced two magazines since its launch. The first laid out what we consider to be the three key campaign areas in the arts: access, freedom and organisation. The second looked at the effect of the Russian revolution on the arts. It linked 1917 to struggles today – like Trump’s attack on National Endowment for the Arts funding – and carried brief reports on fightbacks, such as art school occupations and a threatened strike by reality TV contestants in Sweden. To start the process of connecting artists and revolutionaries, Bad Art supporters in 15 cities across three continents put on events between September and December celebrating the centenary of the Russian revolution. We called it the Bad Art World Tour.

Poetry and rap were a big feature of the tour. At the event ‘It’s Time for a Revolution’ in Kassel, Germany, socialist rapper Holger Burner performed between political speeches while graffiti artists painted live art on the walls. Holger later joined fellow working-class rappers Disorder and Kid Pex at ‘A World to Win’ in Vienna. At Leicester’s ‘Protest Showcase’, young local poets talked about their experiences of sexual harassment, the nightmare of living on benefits, and persecution by the immigration system. The Bad Art sarau in São Paulo included Tatiana Minchoni’s poetry.

In Glasgow, Hailey Madison Slate’s poem ‘My American Education’ asked: “Why do you draw so much if not to sell out galleries? Why do you write so much if not to conjure up the next major franchise? Why do you sing so much if not to drop the next platinum album? … My American Education said create! As long as your brush strokes don’t ask too many questions. Colour inside the lines so as not to draw attention to the fact that they are fixed unfairly. And if you’re writing, mind you choose your words carefully so you never reflect your frustration at this constant desire for beauty over message.”

Elsewhere on the tour, Bad Art’s visual artists ignored these warnings. At the exhibition in Skipton, Yorkshire, some artists were political, others simply liberated. Militant cartoonist Alan Hardman’s muscular line drawings mixed with Peter Harris’s surrealist collages and works by other left-wing artists from the north of England. At Subversive Action in Melbourne, work by Bradley Cochrane looked at the restrictive gender roles and categories defended by class society. Paintings, pencil drawings and more covered the walls in Glasgow. In Stockholm, drawings by young artist Morteza Jamshidi depicted his escape from Afghanistan.

A short film showed oyster mushrooms consuming Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom – Jane Lawson in Leicester. In Stockholm, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian’s video installation looked at capital punishment in Iran. There were live bands at many of the events, and the tour will end with a feminist metal gig in Liège, Belgium. In Barcelona, ‘1917 Then and Now’ focused on the lessons of the Russian revolution for the mass movement in Catalonia. Mixed-discipline performances, including live sculpture, synthesised music, body popping and breakdancing, examined the various stages of struggle in a revolutionary process, with audience participation. The culmination was a cathartic defacement and smashing of a carving of Joseph Stalin.

The world tour events have attracted artists and audiences new to revolutionary ideas. Many of Bad Art’s activists come from the Committee for a Workers’ International, a global Marxist organisation fighting for world socialism. But there are others involved who agree with our broad aims, and we hope many more going forward. We are keen to make connections with other groups – in the United States, for instance, we have made links with the Socialist Artists Alliance.

So the world tour, we hope, is a small beginning in the process of uniting artists and workers in struggle internationally. In the future, as the forces of socialism grow towards a mass, revolutionary international, we are confident that artists will march behind a banner inscribed with Trotsky’s slogan of 1938: “The independence of art – for the revolution. The revolution – for the complete liberation of art!”

James Ivens is part of the Bad Art editorial team. Contact james@badartworld.net.

With this year marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution, reflections upon the relationship between art and emancipation are once again at the forefront of our minds. This is why last Leicester was proud to be part of the inaugural Bad Art world tour.

The fight for the right to freely express ourselves and to have the time and energy to do so is critical to any revolutionary project! So, the organising of the Bad Art ‘Protest Showcase’ on 17 September served an important function in bringing together some of the many anti-capitalist local artists for an inspiring evening of entertainment.

Reflecting both the hope and anguish that dominate our lives, local poet Jodie Hannis passionately exposed the depths of sexual exploitation that is happening all around us, demanding that we act to prevent it, while Drew Walton alternatively used rhymes to orchestrate a rising crescendo of laughter as he lambasted David Cameron’s alleged pig incident.

The Beatles’ famous ‘Paperback Writer’ was reimagined by Drew and elevated from a song that pleads for a publisher to read a wannabe writer’s book, to an attack on injustice and a celebration of the successful collective action taken by Deliveroo riders against their bosses.

Even the stage decorations were political, with Nick Barrett’s ‘Offshore Bunting’ which depicted the flags of the corporate elite’s favoured tax havens. While James Ivens, the dynamic MC for the night, weaved a tight political and comedic line between all the acts.

Experimental dub-reggae outfit Pale Blue Dot lifted spirits, and citiZen bXtr performed a live improvised score to accompany Jane Lawson’s film which revealed the deep rotten state of neoliberalism which she did by using time-lapse photographs to illustrate the literal decomposition (or detoxification) of Milton Friedman’s book Capitalism and Freedom.

Powerful words from Charles Wheeler examined his experiences of the Kafaesque nightmare of living on benefits, and Cynthia Rodriguez waxed lyrical about her lived daily oppressions at the hands of the British immigration system.

This rounded off a beautiful night of diverse and always political art. But most of all as the organisers of the event made clear: “Bad Art isn’t just about saying what’s wrong. It’s about fighting to change it.”

The 2017 issue of Bad Art magazine is published in the centenary year of the Russian revolution. In 1917, society and culture burst out of the dark imperial prison maintained by the landlords and capitalists. The working class seized power.

So the old order did everything to force society back into that prison. They failed. But the mistakes and betrayals of subsequent leaders created a new prison: Stalinism. Later, that too collapsed, and a more modern capitalist prison replaced it.

Now the bosses want us to think that any attempt at an anticapitalist prison break is doomed before it starts.

Bad Art thinks otherwise. In a series of articles in the magazine, shortly to be published online, we sketch an outline of some of the revolution’s main effects for artists and workers, and why it went wrong.

Untitled by Louise Vanhoenacker

Our first issue was well received. Since then, small groups across the globe have responded to the ideas and calls to action we produced as a contribution towards building a revolutionary, anticapitalist movement including artists.

This is important. We need to organise from the bottom up to defend the arts from the destruction of capitalism.

Bad Art believes the best way to fight for the arts today is to mobilise and organise artists alongside the workers’ movement. And to combine this struggle with the general fight to end the capitalist system and replace it with something better.

To do this effectively, we need to learn from the successes and failures of revolutionary movements and struggles in history.

2017 is the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution. In these incredible events, workers took control of society for the first time. This lead to an explosion of ideas and possibilities.

Tragically, the revolution was to be betrayed, and the ugly caricature of Stalinism stole the true story of socialism.

We will post a number of new articles and classic reprints exploring the essential questions thrown up by this overturn.

From the massive impact the Russian revolution had on art, to the revolutionary roots of Surrealism, and the fight that socialists prosecuted against the political – and artistic – betrayals of the Russian revolution. Our intention in this is not to present some dusty history lesson – but a guide to action for today, in developing our own political programmes and tactics.

In the second part of this issue we continue with contemporary articles – such as the fight for musical innovation, and the struggle against Trump. We hope to keep developing the ideas we need today to unite artists in struggle. For that, we need your involvement. In October and November 2017, Bad Art supporters in countries around the world are holding their own political and artistic events. Some of the art in this issue, as well as other work by Bad Art supporters, will be on display. We’re calling it the ‘Bad Art World Tour’. You can read more about it here.

The events will vary in size and content. But all will be an opportunity for you to participate in Bad Art’s development, and the forging of our demands and manifesto. If there isn’t an event near you, we encourage you to organise one and let us know.

With every artistic creation there is a struggle to bring the work into existence. As artists, we know this when we develop our work.

In fighting for social change, that same struggle for creation needs to be developed collectively. Not to pedestalise or punish this or that style of art. But to build a movement of all artists, all youth, all workers, to change society, to free art and humanity from the chains of capitalist exploitation.

For Bad Art, such a society is genuine socialism. We present our latest series of articles as a further contribution towards that aim.

Skipton is a quiet market town better known as the “Gateway to the Yorkshire Dales” than it is for revolution. But on Friday 6 October, socialist artists and activists, as well as the general public, from Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire gathered there to view a dazzling selection of work by artists grouped around Bad Art.

Here were surrealist collages, intricate installations, disturbing paintings, photographs of demos, bold placards, banners, posters and cartoons in amazing variety. There was no monopoly of style or political position. The organiser of the show, Peter Harris, explains: “the diversity of the show was my main focus… The arts enrich our lives as does the power of the imagination – and although completely focused on the primary need for a socialist transformation of society, we must never lose sight of the importance of creativity.”

Alan Hardman, the respected cartoonist whose work has appeared in ‘Militant’ and ‘The Socialist’ over four decades, was present to meet visitors and talk about his work. As ever he was generous with his time and his prints. Unfortunately, Jean Stockdale, an internationally known ‘outsider artist’ who was inspired to exhibit here, was unable to attend.

Bad Art is not a school or genre, but a campaign with a shared recognition that art can inspire us in our struggle and that imagination must be part of the DNA of a socialist future; where no-one will be an ‘artist’ because everyone can be one, free to develop their creativity without political or economic constraints. As Trotsky and his collaborators put it: “To develop intellectual creation, an anarchist regime of individual liberty should from the first be established.” Several of the exhibitors here have no formal artistic training, but do have a passion to create.

The event was attended by 80 people, more than any other preview at the gallery. The 17th century Mill Bridge Gallery overlooking the 18th century Leeds-Liverpool Canal provided a fitting setting for art which points to a socialist future.

]]>http://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/05/22/voluntarios-heroicos-por-la-libertad/feed/0Heroic volunteers of freedomhttp://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/05/22/heroic-volunteers-of-freedom/
http://badartworld.net/index.php/2017/05/22/heroic-volunteers-of-freedom/#commentsMon, 22 May 2017 09:14:57 +0000http://badartworld.net/?p=11732017 marks the 80th Anniversary of the sinking of the ocean liner ‘Ciudad de Barcelona’ (City of Barcelona).The ship was carrying ‘International Brigadistas’ – socialist volunteers who fought alongside Spanish revolutionaries in the 1936-9 civil war against General Francisco Franco’s fascism. ‘Solidarity Park’ is a significant new memorial to the International Brigade fighters being created by sculpture artist Rob MacDonald of Bad Art.

James Ivens speaks to Rob MacDonald to uncover the unusual story, design and participatory process planned for the memorial.

James: So what happened the day this ship went down – and why was it sunk?

Rob: The Ciudad de Barcelona – which was bringing, it’s believed, 300 brigadistas to join the struggle – was sunk by a torpedo on 30 May 1937, just off the coast of Malgrat de Mar, Catalonia.

The ship was supposed to be carrying civilians, as the brigadistas aboard were joining the fight clandestinely. Still it was attacked by a fascist submarine, lent by the forces of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. This is because Mussolini supported Spain’s fascist-led ‘Nationalist’ forces in the civil war, against the anti-fascist ‘Republican’ forces.

There is still historical research to be done as documents were secret, but we know now at least 45 of the brigadistas died. Some accounts say up to 65. The truth is very likely a lot higher. They would have died unrecorded, unknown. We also know now that at least 23 of the men that survived the sinking were to die later in the conflict.

Many more were saved, too. The torpedo was heard in the villages nearby and the fishermen and other citizens in Malgrat de Mar rushed to the rescue.

This is a major event in Catalan history. But as with many other stories in the Spanish Civil War, much information was lost or silenced during the fascist dictatorship’s years in power, and now not many people know about it. At this year’s anniversary we plan to put that right and start the process for a major memorial to what is a fascinating and revealing story of the times.

What inspired you to create the memorial?

When I first moved to Spain I wanted to get involved in the struggle and try to make an impact here. My political knowledge of Spanish history was basic, so I was always keen to learn details of local history. One of my political references as a younger man was the lessons of the Spanish Civil War and, like many people, the heroic actions of the brigadistas inspired me.

So one day, not long after I had arrived, I was wasting time flicking through Facebook and I came across some emotional accounts of men who had survived the sinking of the ship. I was deeply moved by the accounts of the men singing the Internationale, the world anthem of socialism, as the ship sank. But I was stung silent when I read that one ‘Rob MacDonald’ – my namesake – was one of these guys.

It hit me that Rob had not made it to Spain to join the struggle for socialism, but I had. After that I knew I had to make a sculpture to him. After some further investigation it became clear to me that the whole story of all these brigadistas, the people of Malgrat de Mar, and in fact the broader story, needed telling as widely as possible.

Tell us why you think this particular story is so important.

As I said, the actual story of the Ciudad de Barcelona is largely unknown. That it was one of Mussolini’s submarines that sank the ship; how the men sang the Internationale as they died; and how the local community rushed to their aid, saving many.

But there is the wider political story of the period that is largely suppressed too. How these brigadistas came from across the planet to fight not just against fascism, but for a better world, free of oppression – a socialist world.

I think now is the time that young people in Catalonia and across Spain and the world need to hear what these men stood for, why they came to Spain. Not just an academic history lesson, but a practical lesson for understanding and dealing with today’s issues.

We have the Trumps and Le Pens of this world who want you to think it’s the immigrants’ fault that you don’t have a job or a home or decent public services, that it’s refugees taking all the resources. With these defenders of the capitalist establishment, even with the ones who pose as anti-establishment like the populist right does, it’s always somebody else’s fault. They want to channel working-class anger, which is really caused by the attacks of the capitalists, into hate and blame against other workers, the poor and the oppressed.

The brigadistas came to Spain to fight the most extreme expression of those ideas. They stood for genuine equality, solidarity and a socialist world. For me this is reason enough to build a memorial as a beacon, however small, to humanity.

Tell us more about the artwork itself.

The key inspiration is the men singing the Internationale as the ship went down. So the memorial consists of 60 sculpted brigadistas singing. Each will be built on the same template to express their unity, but each will be hand-crafted and have individual aspects to celebrate their differences.

The Brigadistas on the boat came from all around the world: USA, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Britain, Austria, Denmark, France, Australia Norway, New Zealand… Those are just the places we know some of them came from, but some likely came from other places too.

The 60 brigadistas are set aboard a stone ship. I didn’t want the ship sinking, that felt negative, so I have set it riding high across a stone patio of the world. This makes the memorial into a small park. So in the design we added seats in the form of waves, so the area could be somewhere to relax and contemplate everything, and again make it something the community can participate in.

But the idea is more than just a stone monument. We want a community project to develop with things like workshops, historical information-gathering and educational programmes. It’s with collaboration, that’s the way we can really learn the lessons for today.

How will you make the sculptures?

They will be cut, chiselled, carved, sanded and polished, mainly by hand, from local limestone. Actually the quarry I plan to buy the stone from is near one of the last front lines in the civil war in central Catalonia.

Resources allowing, I will form a special new workshop in the town of Malgrat itself just for this project. I see it as a type of method acting – I want to immerse myself in every aspect of the town and its people today. In doing this I want to give local people the opportunity to come in the workshop and participate. I also want the international community, which normally floods the town every summer, to come and take part too.

There’s lots to do when you make 60 sculptures of a half-metre each. So there will be a chance for people to learn a bit of sculpting too. Most people never get the chance to do that; sculpting is often seen as elite art – it’s not, you can sculpt with anything – but it’s hard to get a chance at a level like this.

So this is going to be a participatory project?

Yes! as much as possible I want people keeping me company in the workshop. That way we all create it together. This is important to me, as the collaborative and inclusive approach is central to the socialist ideas the brigadistas stood for.

The project, from the beginning, is a link between the local community and the international community. So at every stage we are trying to strengthen that, make that the driving force.

We want as much as possible to involve the local community in the actual creation of the work. For example, a part from having people coming to the workshop, we also intend for secondary school students to be involved in designing what we are calling “community portholes.” These will be carvings in the shape of the windows of the ship that will tell the story of the day and wider events.

Too many memorials are weird, abstract shapes, or boring blocks of stone, created by a hidden artist. That can be OK – but they don’t have any participation in them; they’re not really owned by the community they’re supposedly put there for. For me, the art is as much the process as the result. So I hope we can take a different route with this one.

Who else is involved in the project so far?

The project started when I met the group who had pieced together the events for the 75th anniversary, Amics del Ciudad de Barcelona. Some of them are local, some international; they are all doing a fantastic job researching and gathering information, documenting and getting the event to be known.

Among them there are some historians and a filmmaker. I presented to them my draft ideas and since then we have worked together in numerous meetings, doing presentations to the local council, shoot a promotional video, etc.

As we develop the project more local people are getting involved voluntarily as for example there is this local architect who helped with some technical aspects.

We also have some of the families of the survivors, who are all an inspiration. Very recently I found the other Rob MacDonald’s family. It took a lot of online searching, but amazingly I found them! I always wanted to link up with them, it has been an emotional and profound experience for me.

We have the support of many workers’ movement figures, like Sean Hoyle, president of Britain’s militant National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

Our latest supporter is Eric Faulkner, a great folk singer, who has written a very moving song about Rob and the Ciudad de Barcelona brigadistas. We hope to release it to help raise funds for the memorial.

So how can people help?

Well, get involved! Join the Facebook group (details below), add to and share our experiences as we make the project come to live. We want to be as transparent and open in the process as we can. What would also be great is to share the story, because it’s a story of great humanity, but also we know there’s more history to uncover.

The first stage of the finance is going to come from a crowd-funding campaign, so of course a donation is useful.

In 1938 the International Brigades produced an internal document saying there should be a memorial to these men built on the beach front. That they were “heroic volunteers for freedom” killed by “fascist pirates.” Now it’s the 80th anniversary, so time to get on with it I think.

I think it’s the hundred or so graffiti artists who are doing the work on a long wall next to my Barcelona workshop. There is space for about ten plus works. It’s like open democracy every day, for months two or more images appear over other ones. Each one is brilliant. I’m mesmerised by it.

If you were not a sculptor what would you be?

A cosmologist looking for aliens.

Could you describe the arts world today in five words?

Leaking out through prison bars!

If you had one political wish, what would it be?

That the German revolution of 1918 had been a success, and the world socialist revolution started in 1917 in Russia could have continued. Then maybe we would be the second or third generation of a socialist world, and all the suffering since wouldn’t have happened.